Wings Over the Pyre

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Within Temptation - Memories - Memories (single version) (Squid's Redoubt)

I just finished reading the 1993 reprinting of the 1987 game, Fringeworthy (hereafter FW).

I’m reminded why that I’m so deeply and abidingly glad that the design of games has changed so radically in the last twenty years, and simultaneously reminded why my friend maliszew’s near-obsession with the structure and feel of late ‘80’s games leaves me wholly cold.

Conceptually, FW is awesome. You probably know it better as Stargate SG-1 since 80% of the underlying concepts that went into the latter originated in FW. So much so that I’m absolutely shocked there hasn’t been any subsequent suits and huge settlements for ripping the idea off wholesale, but I digress. In FW, the world has discovered a set of huge, hovering rings that lead to a network of pathways between worlds. Only 1 in 100k can actually use these gates, so the UN administers the exploration of this new resource. Some gates open to planetary locations, some to alternate Earths (in fact, a massive, endless array of them), some to places in the solar system, some directly to other star systems. Humanity goes in, runs into aliens, finds some cooperative, others less so, and a Big Bad.

All pretty straightforward, right? I could run something based on the underlying idea in an endless parade of fun.

Then there’s the rest of the book. Remember, Tri Tac, ‘93. Ten pages of detailed, small-print human form location tables down to “front of spleen” or “5th metacarpal.” Fifteen of complicated strangely interwoven skill system, to the point of “Solar Powered Electronics” is on par with “Xenobiology.” Fifteen on randomly generating a new planet to be discovered, which is unlikely to really even be human habitable. Don’t forget the inevitable d100[1].

Could I run this? Not on your stinkin’ life. Which is pretty exemplar of the games of the era, a number of which I own in my extensive historical library.

I occasionally wonder if there’d be any money in picking up a license for some of these older properties and retrofitting a new system on the old setting info and feel. Some kind of stripped-down Fudge system would do just fine for the more mechanical systems, or maybe even just a description of common themes and means for dealing with characters in Primetime Adventures or Capes[2] . This would be impossible, since such licenses are always overpriced and would undersell, but … A man needs dreams.

Traveller done up as a Universalis plug-in and seed set amuses me so, though.

1. A review of the Fringeworthy 10th edition says it all:

   And then there’s the combat system. I’m not even going to try to describe it—you won’t believe me. To make a long story short, it makes even Rolemaster seem fast and simple by comparison. Those who want the details anyway are hereby referred to Michael Richter’s review of FTL:2448.

   In summary, this system is misbegotten all the way. Whether in or out of combat, the players and GM will be constantly flipping to different sections of the book just to find the information they need to do something. When they’re not doing that, it’ll be because they’re still trying to figure it out in the first place. Very bad for a game that has supposedly undergone ten years of playtesting.

2. Pretty much my core workhorse games now in many ways. PTA gives you a truly stripped-back character descriptor and conflict system, Capes gives you the GMless and conflict-focus for other things.